December 2, 2003

Sam Goody Store Shutting its Doors

Cornell’s music buffs may have been excited by the blowout sales at the Sam Goody in Collegetown last week, but were probably disappointed by the occasion of the sale. The music store on College Avenue will be closing right after Christmas.

According to Robert Abele, Operations Manager of Ithaca Rentals, Sam Goody first opened in Collegetown in 1979. During its 24 years of business in Ithaca, the store was rebuilt once due to a fire which burnt down the majority of the space in 2000. According to Abele, it moved across the street while renovations took place, and reopened later that year at the present 407 location.

Though real estate values in Collegetown have been rising, this was not the cause of Sam Goody closing, Abele said. According to Abele, “The value of real estate didn’t affect them because their lease was carried over from before the renovations were made.”

The major cause for the store’s closing, according to Laurie Bauer, spokesperson for Musicland Group Inc., is the change in management of the Sam Goody chain. Previously owned by Best Buy, the chain is now under the management of Sun Capital Partners. According to Bauer, the new management will soon be closing 110 Sam Goody stores across the country, including nine out of 47 stores in New York State.

Sun Capital Partners is shutting down the least profitable stores in an effort to improve business. “There has been a decrease in sales across the country,” Bauer said, “and file sharing has surely contributed to the decline.”

The Sam Goody on College Avenue was considered to be one of the chain’s non-profitable stores. The popularity of file sharing among Cornell students has most likely contributed to the CD store’s failure, though the extent to which downloading music affected sales is hard to determine.

Aside from file sharing, Sam Goody faced tough competition from other CD/DVD stores in the area. Best Buy, located five minutes off campus by car, has an enormous selection and generally lower prices. “Two weeks ago I bought a 3-disc set at Best Buy for twelve dollars,” said Daniel Swersky ’05. “It would have been close to double that price at Sam Goody in Collegetown.”

However, some students do not have the means of transportation to get to Best Buy or other music stores, and are sad to see Sam Goody go. “The store closing is disappointing because there’s no longer a place to buy music for students without cars,” said Rachel Brook ’07.

Nothing has been decided yet about what store will open in Sam Goody’s place. “Several stores have expressed interest in taking over that space,” Abele said, “and negotiations will be finalized by next week.”

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Earlier this year, Adam Sinovsky ’05, a Sun photographer, gained access to the reactor complex of the Ward Laboratory while on assignment for The Sun. While taking photographs of the building’s exterior on March 6, Sinovsky entered Ward and requested permission to photograph the reactor, which was granted to him by an unidentified staff member. The photographs, and this incident, have been kept under sealed Sun editor and administrator lips until today. Sinovsky, who said he was “surprised” by the lack of security clearance that allowed him to take the photos, spent approximately 10 minutes in the complex before another unidentified Ward employee confronted him. According to Sun accounts, the employee asked Sinovsky’s escort “What are you doing letting him take photos?” Sinovsky was then asked to delete the digital photos, which he refused to do, and leave the facility. He was contacted later that day by Charles R. Fay, vice provost for research administration. “Apparently the staff at the Lab did not understand the restrictions in place that do not permit the taking of pictures of this facility. I regret the confusion,” Fay wrote in an e-mail to Sinovsky. Fay then explained the Lab’s security standards. “Ever since the Ward research reactor was built and licensed in 1962 Cornell has had to comply with strict federal and state regulations governing the operation of the Lab. As you can imagine, those regulations have been greatly strengthened in the post-911 world,” he wrote. “Simply put, publication of such pictures is considered a serious threat to the safety and security of the reactor,” Faye wrote. This request was agreed to by The Sun. “When we got word that one of our staffers was granted access to the reactor without so much as being asked for a press credential, we were worried,” said Nate Brown ’04, The Sun’s editor-in-chief. “We confronted University officials about the situation and, in the end, decided not to publish word of the lapse in security for fear that it would draw undue attention to the Ward Lab and cause a potential threat to the community.” Brown and other Sun editors cite the decision not to run the photographs and accompanying story as one of the toughest decisions they had to make as an editorial board. Two weeks later, in an editorial entitled “Minimizing the Threat: University must make safety a top priority,” Sun editors wrote, “Like airports, shopping centers, and other areas where large concentrations of civilians can be found, Universities are often seen as ‘soft targets’ for potential aggressors. … Ridding the Ward Center of hazardous materials will be the first step in minimizing the threat of a local attack.” The editorial concluded that “The sooner they evacuate the material, the better.” Archived article by Marc Zawel

The University Library has decided to cancel several hundred of its journal subscriptions to leading science publishing company Elsevier. Previously, the cost of the subscriptions, $1.7 million, had accounted for twenty percent of all Library subscriptions while accounting for only two percent of total journals. Elsevier, a Netherlands based company, is considered by many to be the industry leader. Rising prices and the practice of bundling together journals has made the costs of doing business prohibitive for Cornell though. Ross Atkinson, associate University librarian for collections, said the decision was talked about at length over the course of the past year. “[It is what] we feel is in the best interest of students and faculty,” Atkinson said. Atkinson also pointed out that the cancellation retained some of the more important journals and that the librarians in consultation with faculty members “do not feel that we have lost a whole lot.” This may be Cornell leading the way for many research universities. According to an article in Nature, Sidney Verba, Harvard University library director, has said it is unlikely that his university will renew their deal with Elsevier. Atkinson said representatives from Elsevier came to Ithaca last week to discuss the decision. “They may allow us to make small changes,” Atkinson said. The decision and its reasoning is thoroughly detailed on the University website. “We have tried in these discussions to broker an arrangement that would allow us to cancel some Elsevier titles without such a large price increase to the titles remaining — but Elsevier has been unwilling to accept any of our proposals,” it reads. Representatives from Elsevier could not be reached and the company has previously declined comment on its negotiations with Cornell to The Sun. However, Eric Merkel-Sobotta, head of Elsevier’s public relations, has said to the press in the past that Elsevier’s subscription rates are rising by less than seven percent each year to cover the cost of expanding content. Some have pointed to problems with rising prices in the industry as a whole. “Journals are really going to have to start fighting to survive,” said Joseph J. H. Ackerman, William Greenleaf Eliot Professor of Chemistry Chair at Washington University in St. Louis and associate editor of Elsevier’s Journal of Magnetic Resonance. “All universities simply can’t keep up with rising cost of Journals,” Ackerman said. “Elsevier might be the most egregious offender, I don’t know, but this is something that has been brewing for a long time.” “Many members of the scientific community feel that these costs [of all scientific journals] are unreasonable. It used to be that faculty had their own personal journals, now its only libraries, and even that is becoming too costly,” Ackerman said. “Many scientific societies have now or are starting up their own journals and are encouraging their members to publish in them.” Atkinson said he could not say if Elsevier’s position in the market was that of a monopoly, “that is something the Justice Department determines. But it is not like you can go anywhere else.” Atkinson noted that anyone who still wished to obtain one of the canceled journals through the Cornell libraries could still do so through programs such as Inter-Library Loan and special purchase requests. “The decision is not an attack on Elsevier, it is not an ideological decision” Atkinson said. “It was strictly based on the bottom line.” Archived article by Brian Kaviar